Tag: lessons learned

I Write Because it Changes Me

In the movie Shadowlands, C.S. Lewis (played by Anthony Hopkins) is told by a friend that, despite the mockery of his atheist colleagues, his prayers for his sick wife are having an effect.  Lewis, however, is not concerned with whether or not prayer “works” in altering the universe:

“I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God- it changes me.”

This is a powerful bit of self-honesty.  Lewis felt no need to respond to philosophical or theological objections to his actions.  He wasn’t praying to convince God, he was praying because he knew the value to him of this activity, regardless of the outcome.

I have made a point recently to remind myself of why I write; not to change my audience, but to change me.

There will never be a shortage of people who offer objections to ideas I put to paper, or critique the way I choose to communicate those ideas.  If my goal were to win over as many people as possible to my point of view, this would be incredibly stressful.  Every objection would require a response or a change in my future behavior. It’s not a particularly fun or productive way to live.

Feedback is wonderful.  It creates a connection between creator and consumer that results in better content.  But feedback is only helpful if it doesn’t make us bitter and we don’t worship it.  If it hurts us to hear and we begin to create things motivated entirely by the need to stick it to the “haters”, we’ll produce lower quality content and be less happy doing so.  If we overvalue feedback and rethink every word to predict every possible way in which it might be misinterpreted, we’ll produce boring content and have less fun in the process.  Both of these responses put the feedback of others in the drivers seat and you, the creator, in the passenger seat.  Don’t let that happen.

Take in feedback, enjoy it, laugh at it, use it, but don’t pay it too much attention.  Remind yourself that the reason you write (or read, or speak, or paint, or sing, or…) is because it changes you.

Homestead Your Interests

Homesteading is an age-old form of gaining common-law right to property.  A piece of land that is unowned or abandoned can become yours if you improve upon and maintain it for a period of time.  In the American West, pioneers would find a parcel of land they liked and stake it out as their own.  So long as they built fences or signposts or boundary markers of some kind and generally maintained the property, it was considered theirs.  Smart pioneers would homestead more than they could gainfully farm at first, looking to the future and leaving open the opportunity to expand their operation.  We may not have vast stretches of unclaimed land today, but the need to homestead some metaphorical acreage is still very real.

You have a body of knowledge, expertise, and a set of activities that define you.  This is your brand.  I’ve written before about the danger of being hemmed in by your brand, especially if it’s a successful one.  But how exactly can one prevent it?  By homesteading more space than you can currently occupy.

If you really enjoy architecture and keep in the back of your mind the idea that someday you may put a lot of yourself into it, whether vocationally or avocationally, you need to stake out a territory that includes architecture, and keep the underbrush trimmed so it doesn’t begin to encroach on your homestead.  Maybe you’re a lawyer, and all your friends and associates know you as the law guy.  If you keep your passion for architecture under the surface for twenty years, never letting it see the light of day, it will be a lot harder to make a sudden switch from law to design.  People will find it odd and see it as a frivolous deviation from your brand.  You will feel a lot of pressure to prove that you’re serious about it.  It will take a monumental amount of courage and resolve to make the move, and you will have to steel yourself against the reactions should you fail at first.  It’s like homesteading a virgin wilderness full of hostile flora and fauna.

If, on the other hand, you staked out your creative territory early in dimensions far beyond just lawyerdom, and you maintained your property line with the occasional foray into architecture, the opportunity to make a move later will be far more real and the transition far less daunting.  Maybe you keep copies of popular architecture magazines around for inspiration, and to let visitors see that you consider it a part of who you are.  Maybe you write about it from time to time, or offer amateur architectural tours of your city.  Maybe you keep a design table in your house and draw up blueprints.    Whatever it is, if you maintain the fringes of your property, it will be a lot easier to occupy it should the opportunity arise.

I make myself post a song or a poem once a week on this blog.  It feels a little odd sometimes, and It’s a little embarrassing.  But I love creative writing and keep in the back of my mind the possibility of composing short stories, recording songs, or working on film scripts as something I may want to put more of myself into someday.  I feel like it’s somewhere in me, but not yet ready to fully occupy my energy.  If I go on only producing what currently comes more naturally, commentary and prose, one day I’ll feel the urge to emerge creatively and it will feel like such a drastic transition it may be overwhelming.  I want to trim the weeds back at the corners of who I am by a little creative writing here and there.  I want it to be public, so that a later switch won’t seem quite as out of left-field to the observing world.  I’m under no illusion that posting a song once a week means I will be taken seriously should I become a full-time songwriter; far from it.  It won’t be quite as scary though, and I’ll have a little more confidence being used to putting my creative side out there.

Think about who you are, what you love, and what far-fetched dreams you entertain.  Draw a generous property line that includes even the most out-there interests.  Homestead it, and keep title to your identity with regular maintenance.  You never know when you’ll want to expand your brand.  If you never do, who cares.  You won’t have lost anything by keeping your boundaries wide.

Just Get **it Done

There are a lot of traits and skills that can make someone more valuable professionally.  All of them pale in comparison to one: finishing.  One can make up for a lot of deficiency in skill and experience with hard work, but not the other way around.

By ‘hard work’ I do not mean work that is painful or boring or time consuming.  Certainly hard work can be all of these things, but if you’re measuring work by how much it hurts or how long it takes, you’re spinning your wheels.  Hard work is work that produces something ‘hard’.  It creates a tangible result, and a good one.  What matters is output, getting things done fast and well.

It is true, there’s a trade-off between ‘fast’ and ‘well’.  While it is very important to do a job well, once it meets a certain level of quality you’ve got to complete it and move on.  A lot of people may disagree with me, but I’ve observed that probably eight times out of ten, timeliness is more important than additional degrees of perfection.  The key is to learn something each time about how you could have done it better, that way the quality improves with each project and the time to completion does not decrease.  If you simply get things done, on time, every time without a lot of drama, and learn as you go, you will develop and excellent reputation as a highly valuable individual to work with…and herein lies the danger.

Your reputation is more important to your value in the eyes of others than is your actual product.  It couldn’t be any other way, as no one you work with has time to follow every detail every day of what you do.  If you come through reliably, especially on some big tasks early on, you will begin to get a reputation as someone who gets things done.  The longer you live up to it, the stronger the reputation becomes.  At some point, you’ll see diminishing returns to hard work.  Your reputation will be strong enough to survive a missed project here or there.  When you are most secure in your professional role you are most vulnerable.  The comfort zone is the danger zone.

The danger is not that people will suddenly realize you’re no longer getting it done.  That may happen, but I’ve witnessed people who continue to get by on a legacy of past work for years.  It seems some people can spend the better part of their careers getting work because of a reputation formed decades before.  The real danger is that you’ll stop creating value.  This is a tragedy, not only for any persons or organizations who pay you to produce, but for your own well-being.  Do not underestimate the deep human need to forge and create and hone and toil and complete.

The more praise you get early on, the more you need to be alert to the temptation to slack.  You’ve never “arrived”.  You always need to work hard.  That is what separates the good from the truly great.  The good get a well-deserved reputation and then do what’s necessary to maintain it.  The great put their nose to the grind ’till the end, even if their reputation would be OK if they didn’t.  They continue to evolve what they produce so that it is more and more what they love, but they keep producing.

What can you do to better your career?  Young or old, experienced or inexperienced, just get **it done.

When Impediments Become Implements

My wife and I took the kids out to eat last night to surprise them with a little fun, and to take a break from making dinner and doing dishes.  We got to the restaurant early and were nearly the only people in our section.  Within minutes, the kids were tearing apart napkins, biting crayons, dropping jelly packets on the floor and generally enjoying themselves.  I had settled in my chair with a cup of coffee and was delighted by the relative relaxation of a quiet restaurant and no cleanup after.

Then we heard it.  A deep, disturbing cough.  Every few minutes we’d hear it again.  I discreetly turned towards the sound and saw a rather haggard looking older gentleman sitting alone. The others in our section definitely noticed the cough and tried not to be visibly offended.  I made a comment to my wife that the noise might take all the enjoyment out of the experience.  She just smiled and said I was being a bit too dramatic.

We ordered, ate, and were loitering at our table for a bit.  The coughing happened intermittently throughout the meal, but the man left just before we were done eating.  The waitress came up and said, “You’re all set.”  We looked up a little confused.  She added, “The gentleman over there paid for your meal.”  My wife asked if she was referring to the older guy who had been coughing and she said yes.  She told us he comes in nearly every day, and, “Sometimes he just picks up somebodies check”.  I was incredibly humbled.

What I saw as an impediment to an enjoyable family dinner become an implement.  Not only did this stranger save us a little money, his act completely transformed the whole experience.  My wife was glowing, the kids thought it was the coolest thing ever, and I was reminded of how short-sighted I can be.  My position regarding this guest began as an adversarial one.  I heard his cough and immediately set myself up against him mentally.  I was fighting for an enjoyable experience, and he was trying to prevent it.  When the waitress delivered the news, it shattered my whole narrative and made me feel small.

If we look for roadblocks, we’ll find them.  If we suspend judgement and let things unfold, roadblocks may turn into opportunities.

‘No’ Saves Resources

In most jobs, the goal is to ‘get to yes’. But all the focus on yes can cause us to under-appreciate the immense value of no. No saves resources. Those resources can be redeployed to productive ventures, like turning more maybe’s into yes’s.

Unfortunately, it’s not fun to say no. People like to be liked and they like to be nice. When a question, invitation, request or commitment is hanging out there to which we’d like to say no, we often run away from it, ignore it and say nothing, hoping it will go away. We assume our neglect will send a message to the asker that will make them stop asking without putting us in the uncomfortable position of telling them no to their face.

The problem is, no answer doesn’t always mean no. It can mean yes, I forgot, maybe, not now, how about a slightly different version, or any number of things. It does not send a clear signal to the seeker that lets them know whether, to what extent, and in what way they should spend more time and resources pursuing an answer. This means the next most valuable items on their list have to wait.

I have come to love hearing no. Of course, I’d always rather hear yes, but apart from yes or variations of it (yes later, yes with modifications, etc.), no is the best response. No answer is the worst. It means all my effort gained me nothing. I have no idea whether or not to keep going or how much time to put in. I’m back at square one.

This is true in every industry and circumstance I can think of. It’s true in sales. It’s no less true in accounting, dating, or parenting. No creates value by freeing up resources to pursue other ends. Don’t be afraid to say no. You just might be helping the person on the other end of the question.

When it’s Good to be a Failure

I’m a failure according to my own definition.

The current me doesn’t think I’m a failure – I’m pretty happy about where I’m at in life and feel I’m doing what I love at the moment. It’s one of the versions of me from the past that thinks I’m a failure.

There was a time (I shudder to recall) when I thought being an elected politician was the way to live and spread freedom. I went to work in the legislature to see how to become a lawmaker. During that time I met a lot of people who didn’t know me before and haven’t kept up since. They knew the Isaac who defined success as being an elected official. Friends and relatives saw me working in politics and could foresee what a successful end in that realm looked like in their minds. For these people, my life won’t be a success until I achieve what I was then pursuing.

Along the way I learned more about myself. My goals didn’t change, just the way I visualized achieving them. I was pursuing a certain ideal and a bundle of sensations. I was pursuing freedom. I was incapable of imagining anything but a crude vision of political freedom, and my worldview was so simple I thought politicians created it. Therefore I wanted to be one. Freedom is still what I want, but with more experience and knowledge I have come to believe being involved in politics would be the worst possible way to achieve it. My definition of success morphed.

This happens all the time with humans. A child may say he wants to be a firefighter only because in his world, firefighter is one of the four or five options he can imagine. It’s the one that makes him feel the most excited and good about helping people.

As they grow, children learn about a huge range of activities in the world and realize that, to achieve the feeling they desire, firefighting is an inferior method to being a paramedic, a teacher, an entrepreneur, or an X-Games athlete. It’s not that we sell out on our dreams, it’s just that our dreams were crude representations of what we thought we wanted.  When we learn more, we make different decisions. C.S. Lewis talks about the, “[I]gnorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”

Once we learn what’s possible, we laugh at what we previously thought of as the ultimate achievement. This growth is all well and good until we confront people from our past who have us locked in to our previous dreams.

Sometimes people ask me when I’m going to be president, and no matter what answer I give, it seems to them like a cop-out or excuse for my own failure. They refuse to believe me when I say I wouldn’t wish political office on my worst enemy, let alone myself. They think I’m being modest.

I have a friend who went to Hollywood wanting to be an actor and now realizes his creative energies are far broader. People back home always want to know when they’ll see him on the big screen. We sometimes joke that someday, when he has millions and is producing, directing, writing and doing whatever he wants in life, his friends back home will say, “Haven’t seen you on TV…you just haven’t caught that break yet, huh?”

It can be a little weird to describe how and why your dreams and definitions of success change over time. A lot of people don’t actually want to know. They just want to know if you’re Governor yet, or an Oscar winning actor. That’s alright. Don’t fret over it and don’t spend too much energy trying to convince them you’re really not a failure. If they insist on defining success they way you did before you knew better, just let them think you’re a failure and laugh at the absurdity.

If I’m a failure for not being the silly thing I once wanted to be, it’s good to be a failure.

Don’t Let Words Own You

I had a recent discussion with some passionate people who were frustrated by various public figures describing themselves as libertarian.  They felt it imperative to police the use of this word and go on the offensive, making sure to publicly demonstrate how wrong it was for people to use the word to describe themselves unless they believe certain things.  I’m not sure this is a productive response.

I understand the frustration.  When you use a word to describe yourself or your philosophy, you become increasingly attuned to how the word is used and perceived among the masses.  Christians and other religious groups have this problem, as do political ideologies.  It’s easy to feel like the labels you use abandon you as they become hijacked by people with views entirely different from your own.  The often cited example of the word “liberal” serves as a warning in the minds of many of what happens if you don’t fight to protect definitions.  It used to describe the ideas of people who favored more freedom from government power, now it means something far more nebulous and sometimes it is even used to describe the ideas of people who see more government power as the solution to nearly everything.

But who has “lost” in the transition?  It is true certain words sound nicer than others, but the word was always a shortcut to convey ideas.  The ideas are still here.  You are no less free to believe in less state power because the word “liberal” has changed meaning over the years.  You are no less free to use the word as you choose either.

To say that a word is hijacked is to assume it was first owned.  Can you really own a word?  Language is a constantly evolving spontaneous order.  You can use it, influence it, and benefit from it.  You can’t really own it.  If you spend your time feeling bitter and robbed when people use language in ways you don’t like, you will probably enjoy life less and you’ll be no more able to stand athwart language and yell, “stop!”

There are two potentially productive responses.  You can simply ignore the misuse.  Stop using the word if you must.  Or keep using it if it makes sense.  Or use it sometimes and not others.  Ask people to clarify what they mean by a word if you’re not sure, but don’t demand they stop using it.  Try going label-less.  Be indescribable.  It can be a little inconvenient, but it can also be a lot of fun.

Maybe labels are too important to you to drop and you want to influence the way they are used.  Instead of getting mad, see it as a kind of game or challenge.  What can you do to alter the way people perceive a word?  If you want people to associate good things with labels you use, live a life that impresses and attracts them.  Your ideas and your example are likely to do more to shape the meaning of the word than direct attempts to define it.  When you hear the word “Buddhist” or “Atheist” do you think only of the dictionary definition, or do you think about the way people using that label speak and behave?   Living your ideas will certainly do more for them than brow-beating word abusers.

Live your philosophy and don’t worry about trying to own the words that describe it.  Either live without labels, or live in such a way that it improves the public image of your labels.  Appointing yourself language police and waging war over words is likely to make you look small and grumpy.

If you live in perpetual fear that whatever label you belong to might move in a direction you don’t approve of, then you’re being owned by that label.  Language is an awesome and beautiful tool, but it won’t be made a slave and it’s a poor master.  It can be used, but it can’t be owned.  When you try, it tends to own you.

Don’t Let Your Success Define You

My good friend and blogger over at Tough Minded Optimism, T.K. Coleman, just wrote the blog post I intended to write today. This should not come as a surprise, as we have talked at length on this topic and most of my ideas on it come from him. I’ll quote him at length, because he nails it:

“Every time I attempt to create, I am confronted by two aspects of my self: T.K. the brand and T.K. the creator.

T.K. the brand is the part of me that feels a need to protect my reputation from the fatal possibilities of being seen as incompetent, uncreative, inconsistent, and unintelligent.

This is the P.R. department of my psyche and it never approves of me experimenting with new techniques out in the open.

It always reminds me, with the very best of intentions, of course, that the subtlest miscalculation could result in permanent damage to my image as a writer, a thinker, or an innovator.

T.K. the creator is the part of me that wants to exploit every experience as an opportunity to discover something new.

The creator is not concerned with saving face, protecting the brand, or subjecting creative impulses to quality approval tests.

This conflict is more acute the more successful you are at your “branded” activity. If you get a paycheck, or acceptance in your social circles for being the X guy, it’s a lot harder to be the Y guy. Even if you’re not the best at X, the mere fact that you’ve been doing it for some time and are known for it makes it more secure than Y. While it makes sense to specialize and go where returns are greatest, it’s also wise to make sure we include our own fulfillment in how we define returns.

I love music making, songwriting, poetry, short stories, and other creative forms of expression. I happen to think I’m not very good at them, but I get a lot of joy out of trying. It’s hard to let that part of myself show, because I’ve engaged in so much more public commentary and analysis. Whether or not I’m good at the latter, I’m comfortable with it and many people I know got to know me as a person who engages in that. To introduce a new aspect of myself is scary and a little embarrassing. But it feels even worse to repress it.

There was a special on an NFL game earlier this year about 49ers tight end Veron Davis and his love of art. Davis opened an art gallery in San Francisco where he displays and sells art, much of it his own. I was impressed. Not with the art as much as with the courage of a top tier athlete to put another side of himself out there for public scrutiny. Whether or not his art is good, it will tend to be seen as art produced by a non-artist, or the opening of his gallery as a self-indulgent act by a guy too rich for anyone to tell him he’s not an artist. I happened to think his art was pretty good, but that’s not the point. The point is he was willing to recreate himself, or enlarge his brand beyond what had worked before. I respect that. He was not letting the public perception define the private reality.

T.K. ends with some advice from his experience,

“I’ve been somewhat of a rebel towards the first voice [of risk aversion] for over a year and I’ve gotten more creative work done during that time than in my entire life combined.

I’ve discovered that it’s not enough to merely FIND work that’s worth doing. One must also FIGHT for the permission to keep doing the kind of work that turns them on, to avoid the trap of being boxed-in by the demands of the brand.

We each have to find our own ways of negotiating the concerns of our brand while making sure our creative evolution is not stunted in the process.

I leave the details of the process up to you.

My point is philosophical:

A brand is a great asset, but a very poor master.

At all costs, avoid becoming its slave.”

Ten Reasons to Blog Regularly

1. Self Discipline – Like all disciplines, it makes you a better person; more in control of your schedule and habits.  It is empowering to do something on a regular basis.

2. Self Translation – You hold a set of beliefs and ideas about the world.  You may not even know exactly what they are, but they exist.  Blogging helps you translate those ideas into a form that you and others can use.

3. Self Education – You have no idea how much you know, or how capable you are of understanding and explaining things.  Once you start blogging, you’ll be surprised to discover what a genius you are.

4. Observation – Every day you are taking in loads of sensory information.  You see news clips, billboards, emails, people; you hear music, talk, etc.  When you start to blog you learn to find meaning in the things your senses take in, and find story lines.  You learn to observe.

5. Humor – The things noted above are often hilarious, you just don’t always realize it at the time.  Regular blogging helps you recreate experiences you’ve had, which often reveals their hilariousness.

6. Writing – Blogging ain’t great literature, but it can be.  Any kind of writing regularly will improve your skills.  Blogging will especially help you learn to be more concise and interesting.

7. Self Knowledge – You may not know your area(s) of interest and expertise – regular blogging will help you discover what you are interested in and good at as you begin to see patterns and reoccurring themes in your posts.

8. Experimentation – Blogging allows you to be a pundit on any issue.  You can comment on things you normally don’t have time or knowledge for.  You are allowed to speculate and think out loud on a blog in ways that more formal media do not allow.

9. Crash-testing – Blogging regularly will inevitably produce some pretty good writing.  Blogging every day will help you get all kinds of stuff out, and then look back and see if any of it is worthy of refinement and publication elsewhere.  It’s a great testing ground for ideas, themes, articles, outlines, etc.

10. Archiving – Regular blogging for just a year can result in hundreds of articles on hundreds of topics.  You will develop an archive of your thoughts and a record of how they’ve evolved over time.  When someone asks for your opinion on an issue you won’t have to start from scratch.  You can send them a link to that time you expressed it so well.

Life as a Game

The great storyteller C.S. Lewis says in one of his stories (though I can’t remember which) that some of the most sinister things are those that look like or pretend to be something they are not.  I’d modify this slightly and say that the worst things are those that actually believe themselves to be something they are not.  Life is full of stories and games.  It is not the playing or telling that causes trouble, but when we begin to believe the game is the reality.

Take sports.  Imagine if a professional football player actually believed that the game was life.  If winning was not just the artificial end within the construct of the game, but the actual end in life, you might see things like the scene in the ridiculous movie Any Given Sunday, where a player shoots a would be tackler.  Players would hurt or kill opponents regularly and some would proudly become martyrs just to win.  Critics of sports will say that this already occurs, but if you think hard about it, even the most over-committed behave as if they are in a game and that life is something else.  The most criticized decisions, like bounties for injuring players, or keeping an injured player in, are egregious precisely because it is so universally acknowledged that sports is a game and it is improper to treat it like life.

It’s harder to see the other games and stories, and games and stories nested within games and stories, that we regularly engage in.  Language itself is a kind of game.  When you transform an idea into a mental image or words in your mind, you produce a symbol that represents the idea, but not perfectly.  When you put those symbols into audible form, they are still less representative of the core idea.  The hearer unbundles the words and facial expressions, translates them into ideas in their own mind, and finally translates them into a response or action.  At the end of this game, the action of the hearer may manifest something quite different from the idea with which you began.  You played the game of verbal communication.  The better you are at the game, the more the response you got was what you wanted.

But this paints too simple a picture of the games we play.  Language takes place in a social context.  It is nested within several overlapping games.  If you are talking at a work party, everyone involved is operating within a rich narrative about appropriate behavior, what words and actions mean, who relates to who in what ways, who plays what roles within the group, and so on.  We are regularly navigating multiple complex narratives and games.

This is not a bad thing.  Games and stories are useful and inevitable.  We haven’t yet found a way to telepathically share abstract ideas, and I’m not even sure we’d enjoy it if we could.  Games and stories help us make sense of the world, form relationships, predict causality, and move closer to our goals.  Games are useful and they’re also a lot of fun.  The danger is when you forget it’s a game and think it’s life itself.

I hate formal attire.  It’s uncomfortable and I think it looks like a silly costume.  Still, in certain contexts, a game has evolved wherein everyone wears certain costumes that come bundled with certain signals and ideas.  I play the game, even if I sometimes wish everyone would find a more comfortable way to create the context of formality.  I don’t mistake the game for real life – and thank goodness.  If being a savvy dresser was the goal; if it was itself success, seriousness, intelligence, I’d be in trouble.  I’m not very good at dressing well.  Luckily, it’s a game and a way to communicate these concepts, albeit imperfectly, and it is tied up with a lot of other ways to communicate.  I can do it enough to get by, but if dressing well meant living well, I’d be having a rough go of life.  By recognizing unspoken dress codes as a game, I can actually have some fun with them and not feel so choked by my necktie.

Upon seeing games for what they are, it’s tempting to refuse to play and reject them altogether in favor of “the real thing”.  This is a mistake in the opposite direction.  There may be a time when I can always refuse to wear a suit and it won’t harm me, but for now, it would hinder my other goals in life.  It would alienate me from people whose company I enjoy.  I try not to be bitter at the games people play, but enter in on my own terms and navigate them toward my own ends.  Even a hermit monk plays games.  He has entered a narrative that gives explanatory power to his unusual behavior, and thereby protects him from some of the hurt that comes from not being understood.  The social story of the hermit exists as a kind of fortress within which he can opt-out of other games with less harm to his relationships with others.  (Of course hermitage is a game that, once chosen, can be hard to deviate from without significant cost, but the concept of getting stuck in our own games is for another day.)

It is incredibly liberating to realize the game-like nature of life.  We are constantly telling and acting in stories and playing games.  Once we awaken to this realization, we can step back and remind ourselves that the object of the particular game ought not be confused with the object of our life.  We can seek to find the truth that resonates with us to our core, but on the journey we will inevitably have to play games with their own objectives.  Don’t despise or run away from the games, but don’t forget that they’re just games!  Play them, enjoy them, master them, fail at them, laugh at them, love them.  It will make your journey towards fulfillment a better one.

(For a great read in this vein, I recommend Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse)

Waging Generational Warfare Against Yourself

I just read a wonderful book called How They Succeeded.  I was struck by how many of the highly accomplished individuals interviewed mentioned staying out of debt as a key to success.  It’s obvious that being debt free has practical benefits like the ability to accumulate capital, the maintenance of good credit and a good reputation.  But these seemed rather simple and obvious and not enough to warrant the repeated advice.  None of them mentioned personal hygiene or other obvious practical disciplines, so why debt?

I think there are reasons beyond the practical and material for minimizing debt.  There is a psychological loss of freedom that can take place with the knowledge of debt hanging over ones head.  This can subtly subvert free-thinking and creativity and narrow the lens through which one sees the world.

This is probably not the case for everyone in every circumstance.  If you’re involved in lots of business endeavors where you need to operate on credit you may be very comfortable with and adept at handling debt.  I know people who do not seem to have any trouble with a constantly fluctuating personal balance sheet.  It’s not that way for me.  I definitely feel the steady pressure of debt like white noise in the background of all I do.

On the one hand, it seems odd that debt would be problematic.  Borrowing money from the probable excess of the future to subsidize consumption of the tighter present can make financial sense and result in an overall increase in enjoyment of life.  Indeed, if we never changed or grew and our preferences were the same through time, debt would make perfect sense as a way to smooth the ups and downs of material pleasures.  But that’s just it, we change.

This excellent blog post about doing what you love mentions being stuck with the career choices made by your teenage self.  If you are determined to be a lawyer or a doctor at a young age and persist down that path at some point you may realize you no longer enjoy it, but your options have narrowed with your skill set.  You are a captive to the choices of your earlier self.  It’s no different with consumption decisions than educational or career decisions.  Going in to debt is a way for your present self to borrow from your future self.  Think about the level of presumption.  Are you really confident your future self will be the type of person who would think it a good idea?  Might they have other uses to put the debt payments to?

When you go into debt, you are binding another person – your future self – to subsidize the desires of your present self.  It may be a good idea in some cases, but it warrants very careful consideration.  It’s not merely a question of whether your future self will have the resources to subsidize your present preferences; it’s also a question of whether you’ll be happy about doing it.  I don’t want to be bitter at my former self for the financial obligations I have.  I’d rather the self of the past, present and future work together towards the fulfillment of our individual and shared life goals.

Fantasy Football and Economics

An article from last month’s edition of The Freeman in which I discuss some economic lessons from fantasy football and at the same time grind an ax with a former fantasy football commissioner. Maybe it’s wrong to use economic principles and a great outlet like The Freeman as a way to vent frustration, but it worked and I am now over it…mostly.

The article is here.

Mentors Don’t Have the Answers

The word mentoring sounds really nice. It gives everyone a good feeling. It’s like “charity”, “generosity”, “helping”, or “teaching”; they all evoke positive emotions and make you feel like it’s something you should do. I think all of these words are overused, over-appreciated and under-scrutinized. There’s a valuable way to engage in all of these things, but the common forms they take are pretty flimsy.

Take mentoring. Those seeking to mentor often see potential mentees as projects or people upon whom they must bestow wisdom and guidance. Those seeking to be mentored are often looking for answers to tough questions in life like what education or career path to pursue and what steps get them closer to their goals. Neither of these approaches yield much fruit. Why not? Because no one has better answers for the questions you face than you. No one knows more about your own life and the direction it should take than you.

I’ve had older guys that I really respected (and some that I didn’t) attempt to take me under their wing and help guide my life. Sometimes I’d see something interesting in a person and seek them out to learn from them or ask them about it. So far so good. But at some point it would evolve into them feeling like they needed to provide not just conversation about whatever I was seeking, but guidance for my life as a whole. I balked at this. At the time I always felt a little guilty, like I shouldn’t be so arrogant to ignore or turn away from their attempted mentoring. I didn’t have a father figure in the traditional sense, and a lot of these guys recognized that and were trying to help fill that void. All good intentions. Looking back, I am thankful for that anti-mentee instinct I had. I never wanted or needed guidance on life in general and no one could have given it anyway. I wanted to learn from them and discuss with them specific areas in their thinking and action that I admired or found intriguing.

On the flip side, I’ve been guilty of the same. I’ve spotted talented young people and tried to help guide their lives. It doesn’t work.

I recall a revelation I had that freed me from the guilt I felt for ignoring mentors. I realized that I knew more than they did. Not about everything, of course, but about my own life. I realized that they couldn’t answer questions for me, but they could live their own life in a way that captured my attention and led me to seek specific bits of wisdom. I had to be the seeker to gain value. If they were seeking me to offer advice, chances are it wasn’t all that valuable. There are exceptions, but as a general rule I found the most helpful wisdom was that which I sought myself and not that freely bestowed by well-intentioned mentors.

This realization did not cause me to respect my elders less, but more. I released them from the burden I had imposed on them to provide solutions and answers they couldn’t and allowed them to just be who they where. It was then that I began to realize the things I did respect in them and the things I could learn.

I have endeavored to be a mentor only when sought, and even then not to attempt to offer answers for questions never asked or big-picture life questions I couldn’t provide the answers to. If someone seeks me out to ask my thoughts on a piece of writing, a career move, or an educational choice, I gladly share them. I’ve tried to resist the temptation to go on to tell them much more. If I have anything valuable to offer, it is more likely to come from their observation of me than from my words. If they want more, they can seek more.

Mentoring is great, but you should always remember that no mentor has the answers to your questions. They have answers to their own questions, and those can provide helpful insight. Seek such insight from those you respect, integrate it into your worldview, but remember that at the end of the day, you are your best mentor. After all, it’s you who lives with the choices you make, not others. Incentives are powerful.